Chapter 38
James
Jane is beaming at me from a table in the corner when I arrive at the coffee shop, and I’m somewhat surprised to see her cast and sling. Though I don’t know why. In all the drama of the last week, I’d forgotten all about her accident.
“I’ve got some exciting news!” she says, as soon as I draw near, smoothing a hand over her ponytail, and my heart sinks.
“I’ve got some things I want to say, too. Let me go get a coffee,” I say, and she nods, still smiling. I can feel her eyes on my back when I head to the counter. I blink up at the board.
“Double espresso,” I say.
“Yeah, man, it’s that kind of day,” the barista says, twiddling a spoon in the air.
“Unfortunately, it’s always that kind of day,” I say.
“I can do you a nice macchiato? Take the edge off the bitterness?” he says with a grin.
I shake my head. “Hit me with the strong stuff.”
“Right on, man.”
When I get back to my seat, Jane is on her phone. “Sorry, work!” she mouths. She talks for about a minute, then hangs up and places her phone face down on the table. “Busy, busy!”
We were always engrossed in our respective careers and our shared goal of buying an apartment here, but we had no dreams about where we’d like to live, how our house or life would look, or even what we’d fill it with.
It was work hard, save money. Where was our day-to-day connection?
The in-jokes, the in-depth chats? The Mr. Karen banter and the sci-fi books?
The learning to ride? We used to cycle, but we raced; we didn’t chat about wizards or how people die in stories.
When I look at Jane now, and in all that’s happened since, how well do I even know her?
She’s felt more and more like a stranger every time I’ve seen her, and that’s wild, given how long we were together.
She reaches over the table and squeezes my hand. “I’ve been so looking forward to talking to you.”
“Oh yeah?” I say, my gaze roaming over her tight ponytail. “I want to talk to you, too.”
“Great!” she says. “Should I start?”
I wave my hand at her to carry on. Jane’s agenda always took precedence, but that was my fault as much as hers. I was happy to listen. I was the Sadie in this relationship. And my heart clenches in my chest; have I been guilty of not listening to Sadie? Of never asking enough questions?
“I’m staying in New York!” she says, with another big beam.
Ah. I was rather hoping that, once she went back to Philly, I’d get some distance from the calls and turning up at random times.
“Oh, yeah? Is Kevin moving here?”
She frowns at me. “No. I had a review with my manager last week, partly because of this.” She waves her hand over her plaster cast and sling.
“I talked to her about how I’d probably be leaving within a year, and she went into a complete panic.
She said they can’t afford to lose me, and they’ve given me a promotion and a big bump in pay, and now I’ve got a team of my own! ”
Her eyes are wide and thrilled, and I’m pleased for her, I really am. “That’s great, Jane. Congratulations.”
“I’m so excited! It’s such an amazing opportunity. It’s just as good as the one you’ve got with Williams Security!”
I laugh. “This isn’t a competition.”
Her eyebrows rise. “Of course it is! It’s all about doing better and better. We spurred each other on, you and I.”
Did we? And where did that get us? “You don’t compete with your other half, Jane. A couple is meant to be a team, I mean,” I wave my hand around. “Not that we’re a couple now …”
“But that’s just what I wanted to talk to you about!
Kevin won’t move here.” She purses her lips.
“He told me that ages ago. And I can’t do a long-distance relationship, if I’m honest.” She winds her ponytail around her uninjured hand.
“This whole thing with Kevin …” She sighs.
“It’s been such a mistake. I’m so sorry, Jim-bug.
I put you through all this for no good reason.
Let’s put all this behind us and we can pick up where we left off.
” She reaches out and squeezes my hand. “I owe you a huge apology. I’ve really missed you.
We were so great together, and I just didn’t see it. ”
No good reason? And the use of that endearment again is like chalk scraping down a blackboard.
I hate it. I trusted her so much, and she torched it.
She seems so genuine, but she’s like a pile of sand, shifting under your feet and hands, and you’re slipping and sliding, grains running through your fingers until you’re left grasping at empty air.
“That’s not going to happen, Jane.”
A little crease appears between her eyebrows. “Why not?”
Where do I start? “You cheated on me.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t …”
“And I’m with Sadie now.”
Her eyes bug out. “What? That awful woman who lied about her degree?” She starts laughing. “Don’t joke about things like that. She’s been leeching off you ever since you gave her a job.”
Awful woman? Leeching off me?
Something hot ignites in my chest. “I’m not joking, Jane.”
She stares at me. “You’re dating her?”
Well, we’ve never actually talked about what we’re doing. We’ve only just got to the point where we’re not dealing with my crazy ex-girlfriend or her stepdad. I have no idea what label Sadie might want to put on this, and I need to discuss that with her.
“We’re a couple.”
Her lips part. “You’re kidding me! She wears big cardigans, cheap clothes, and next to no makeup.” She laughs again, and the heat in my blood sets on fire. “You know she’s taking advantage of you, don’t you?”
My face is hot now. “How is she doing that, exactly?”
“Well,” she says, folding her arms like she’s settling in to tell me all the things she understands that I don’t.
“She obviously has no money. She conned her way into your company, and she also talked her way into getting a room in a brilliant apartment in the Financial District, I might add. You have to work your way up from the bottom. You can’t just leapfrog over everyone else’s hard graft. ”
“Well …”
Jane reaches across the table and squeezes my hand again. “I can’t believe you can’t see this. You’re such a rescuer of timid doormat-type people, James! I know you were really cut up about me, and that jumping off the roof thing …” She pauses, and when her eyes meet mine, they’re red.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
“That was a long time ago.”
“A long time ago? It was six weeks ago! If I’d realized you felt that strongly about me, I would never have gone off with Kevin.”
“What?”
“You never made any grand gestures. You never did anything that said to me, she’s the one.”
So, trying to jump off a building is a grand gesture, is it? I could have done it and died. She’s the stupidest woman I’ve ever met.
“Jane, that’s ridiculous. We were together for twelve years. I never so much as looked at another woman. Why did you think I didn’t feel like that about you? I proposed with all those notes!”
“Oh, yes!” She laughs, like she forgot about those. “Those little notes! God, all those stupid things we said and did. We were so young!”
Jane and I talked about nothing meaningful, did we?
Even though, if you’d asked me at the time, I would have said we were perfectly in sync.
I took her back to our old school and gave her a series of notes with all the things I loved about her written on them: things she said or did that made me laugh, things we did together.
“You always take everything so calmly and rationally in your stride,” she carries on. “Everything’s easy. There was never any drama or excitement in our relationship.”
And thank God for that. Who wants to live like that? It’d be exhausting.
“Well, maybe Kevin will give you grand gestures and drama and excitement.”
“Oh, he doesn’t deal with anything properly. He can’t fix stuff in the apartment. He just flies off the handle when things go wrong. It’s so tedious.”
This whole conversation is making me want to bang my head against a wall. “You can’t have it both ways, Jane.”
She leans forward, whispering, “There were times when I felt like you ignored me, almost deliberately.”
She says this like it’s some state secret or awful revelation.
I did ignore her sometimes, but it wasn’t malicious, and it didn’t mean I didn’t like her.
I wanted quiet. Time to think. You can’t live in each other’s pockets.
Everyone needs some space. Ninety percent of the time Sadie and I just sit side by side not engaging at all, absorbed in our own books.
It’s blissful. But maybe I’ve made a huge assumption here, and all women want is your undivided attention.
But as soon as I think it, I know that’s wrong.
Sadie would be aghast if she didn’t have time to read.
She ignores me. The thought makes me smile.
“That’s just how I’m wired. I’m steady and I like my own headspace. There are subjects I care about, things I want to dig into, and I want some time to think about them.”
“Without me?”
“Of course! You wouldn’t be interested in JavaScript.”
Her lips flatten into a thin line. How did this turn into a postmortem about Jane and me?
We’re not a thing anymore. I don’t even want to have this conversation; nothing I say is going to make the slightest bit of difference.
She really is oblivious. Still, I didn’t come here just to rehash old ground.
There’s something I need to say before I leave.
“Sadie isn’t conning anyone; she’s not like that.” And as Jane opens her mouth, I shake my head. “You’re not hassling her again. Turning up at the office to say what you did to Sadie was totally unacceptable. If you do that again, I’ll report you for harassment.”
Her mouth drops open.
“But if I’m being honest with you, the reason we’re never getting back together has very little to do with how much I like Sadie; it’s about you completely torching our relationship and my trust.”
Now her eyes really do fill with tears. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so harsh, but I want this to be crystal clear.
She bites her lip. “I’m so sorry, Jim-bug. I wish I hadn’t done what I did. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
“The thing is … I don’t think you were wrong. We were like brother and sister a lot of the time.”
She puts her head in her hands. “You proposed to me, James.”
“I know. And that would have been a huge mistake for both of us.”
Her eyes swim with tears. “Are you saying that this is the end?”
“I think this ended a long time ago, don’t you?”